Then his roving gaze spied a prospect: the great curving bones of a defunct monster. He couldn't tell what kind of animal it had been in life, but it must have been larger than a dragon. The bones seemed too solid for a roc, and there was no sign of wings, so probably it had been a grown groundborne sphinx. Ten times the height of a man. The only reason sphinxes did not rule the jungle was their rarity, and disinterest in ordinary matters. Dragons were common, while sphinxes were hardly ever encountered. Bink wondered why that was so, and what could kill a sphinx in its prime. Boredom, perhaps. "Crombie, point out the direction of the closest suitable or adaptable site for our overnight camp," he said, wishing to verify his notion.
Crombie obliged. He pointed toward the bones. Bink's hunch had been right! He was gratified. "We'll gather some blanket leaves and spread them over those bones," he said. "That will make us a decent shelter, and it can serve as a fort in case of attack. Crombie, point us out the nearest blankets."
The griffin pointed--right into the quivering ropes of a predator tree. It was not a tangler, but seemed related; it would hardly be safe to go there! "Well, maybe we can stay on guard better if we can see out," Bink decided. "Chester, why don't you stand the first watch. Wake me up the moment you find yourself getting sleepy, then wake Crombie."
The centaur nodded agreement. He did not inquire about Humfrey's share of the work; obviously the Magician would not be reliable for this.
Chapter 8
Mad Constellations
Bink paused for a call of nature, not of magic--and spied a chunk of wood, so dark and moss-grown that it resembled a rock. Something like that could be useful, in case a monster attacked in the night. The wood seemed to have a nice heft, good for throwing. He squatted to pick it up--and paused, in case it should be enchanted. But his talent would protect him; if the piece were dangerous, he would be unable to touch it
He picked it up, observing the etched grain of it, brown and green and white and altogether intriguing. It was surprisingly hard and heavy, for wood; he wondered whether it would float or sink in water. He felt a tingle in his hand as he held the chunk. There was some quality about it, something magic, strange and potent He felt his talent responding, taking nebulous hold, sizing up this thing, as it had once before when he drank from the spring of life. As before, his magic encompassed that of the other thing, and accepted it without penalty. Bink's talent was of Magician stature; he seldom felt its action directly except when it encountered strong or complex opposing magic. Yet--a chunk of wood?
He carried the chunk back to their temporary camp. "I don't know what this is, but it seems to be strongly magical. It may be useful!."
Chester took it "Wood, unusual, durable. This might have come from a very large, old tree. I don't recognize the species, which makes it remarkable. Maybe you could find some of the bark--"
Crombie squawked. "Give it here, horseface. I've seen a lot of wood in my day."
Chester stiffened only slightly. "By all means, bird-beak."
Crombie held the chunk in one foreclaw and inspected it closely. "Squawk."
"Something odd about this."
"Yes," Bink agreed. "Before you get too involved, will you point out the nearest food for us? We can eat while considering."
Crombie obligingly whirled and pointed. Bink looked, and saw a large glowing fungus. "That must be it. I never ate glow before, but your talent's never wrong." He walked over and reached down to break off a section. The fungus was firm and dry, pale inside, and emitted a pleasant odor.
"Squawk!" Crombie protested to the centaur. "I'm not through with it."
"You've had it long enough, buzzard-brain," Chester said. "My turn now."
Bink had to run to break up yet another quarrel. The trouble with fighting creatures was that they tended to fight! He couldn't turn his back on them even to fetch food. "It's the Magician's turn!" he cried. "Maybe he can identify it." He took back the wood and carried it to Humfrey. "Sir, if you care to classify this rare specimen--"
He had said the magic words. The Magician's attention was attracted. He looked. He blinked. "That's Blue Agony fungus! Get rid of it!"
Oops! Bink had put the wrong hand down, and shoved the fungus under Humfrey's nose. "Sorry. I meant to show you this wood, not the--" He paused. "The fungus is poisonous?"
"Its magic will turn your whole body blue, just before you melt into a blue puddle that kills all the vegetation in the ground where it soaks in," Humfrey assured him.
"But Crombie pointed it out as safe to eat!"
"Ridiculous! It's safe to touch, but the unsafest thing anyone could eat. They used to use it for executions, back in the bad old early Waves."
Bink dropped the fungus. "Crombie, didn't you--" He broke off, reconsidering. "Crombie, would you point out the worst thing we could eat?"
The griffin shrugged and pointed. Right toward the fungus.
"You absolute idiot!" Chester exclaimed to the griffin. "Have the feathers in your brains rotted? You just a moment ago pointed it out as safe!"
Crombie squawked angrily. "Bink must have picked up the wrong item. My talent is never wrong."
Humfrey was now examining the piece of wood. "Crombie's talent is always wrong," he remarked absently. "That's why I never rely on it."
Even Chester was surprised at this. "Magician, the soldier is no prize--even I am willing to concede that--but usually his talent is sound."
Crombie squawked, outraged at this qualified endorsement
"Maybe so. I wouldn't know." The Magician squinted at a passing sweat gnat. "What is that creature?"
"You don't recognize a common sweat gnat?" Bink asked, amazed. "A moment ago you were classifying the most obscure bugs, discovering new species!"
Humfrey's brow furrowed. "Why should I do that? I know nothing about bugs."
Man, griffin, and centaur exchanged glances. "First Crombie, then the Magician," Chester murmured. "It must be the madness."
"But wouldn't that affect all of us?" Bink asked, worried. "This is more like a misfire of talents. Crombie pointed out the worst food instead of the best, and Humfrey switched from knowledge to ignorance--"
"Right when the chunk of wood switched hands!" Chester finished.
"We'd better get him away from that wood."
"Yes," Chester agreed, and stepped toward Humfrey.
"No, please--let me do it," Bink said quickly, confident that his talent could handle the situation best. He approached Humfrey. "Excuse me, sir." He lifted the chunk gently from the Magician's grasp.
"Why doesn't it affect you?" Chester asked. "Or me?"
"It affects you, centaur," Humfrey said. "But since you don't know your talent, you don't see how it is reversed. As for Bink--he is a special case."
So the Good Magician was back in form. "Then this wood...reverses spells?" Bink asked.
"More or less. At least it changes the thrust of active magic. I doubt it would restore the griffin cow or the stone men, if that's what you're contemplating. Those spells are now passive. Only a complete interruption of magic itself would nullify them."
"Uh, yes," Bink said uncertainly.
"What kind of a special case are you?" Chester demanded of Bink. "You don't do any magic."
"You might say I'm immune," Bink said cautiously, wondering why his talent was no longer protecting itself from discovery. Then he looked down at the wood in his hand. Was he immune?
He dropped the wood. "Squawk!" Crombie said. "So that's why my talent missed! That wood made me...pumf squawk screech--"
The golem had wandered near the wood, and his translation had disintegrated. Bink gently lifted Grundy away from it
"...of what I meant to," the golem continued, blithely unaware of the change. "It's dangerous!"
"It certainly is," Bink agreed. He kicked the wood away.
Chester was not reassured. "That means this was an incidental foul-up. We have yet to face the madness."
Crombie located the nearest safe food, su
ccessfully this time. It was a lovely cookie bush growing from the rich soil beside the bones. They feasted on chocolate-chip cookies. A handy water-chestnut tree provided ample drink: all they had to do was pluck the fresh chestnuts and puncture them to extract the water.
As Bink chewed and drank, his eye fell on another earth mound. This time he scraped it away carefully with a stick, but could find nothing except loose earth. "I think these things are following me," he said. "But what is the point? They don't do anything, they just sit there."
"I'll take a look at one in the morning," the Magician said, his curiosity moderately aroused.
They set up house within the gaunt cage of bones as darkness closed in. Bink lay back on the cushion of sponge moss beneath the skeleton--he had checked this out carefully to make sure it was harmless--and watched the stars emerge. Camping out was not so terrible!
At first the stars were mere points of light peeking between the bars of the bone-enclosure. But soon Bink perceived patterns in them: the constellations. He was not conversant with the stars, because Xanth was not safe at night; he had stayed inside, and when caught outside had hurried to shelter. Thus he found the landscape of the night sky intriguing. He had somehow thought, for no good reason, that the stars were of equivalent brightness, evenly dispersed. Instead, they were highly varied in both respects, ranging from piercing-bright to look-again dim, and from solitary splendor to clustered confusion. In fact they seemed to form patterns. In his mind he could draw lines between them, fashioning pictures. There was the head of a man, and a curving line like a snake, and a blob with tentacles like a tangle tree. As he concentrated, these things became more definite. The figures assumed greater definition and conviction, seeming almost real. "Say, there's a centaur!" Bink exclaimed. "Naturally," Chester said. "That's one of the established constellations. Been there for centuries."
"But it looks alive! I thought I saw it move."
"No, the constellations don't move. Not that way. They--" Chester broke off.
"He did move!" Bink cried. "His arm, fetching an arrow from his bag--"
"His quiver," Chester corrected him. "Something strange here. Must be atmospherics."
"Or maybe the air moving," Bink said. Chester snorted. They watched the centaur in the sky take out his arrow, fit it to his bow, and cast about for some target. There was a swan in view, but it was a very large, tame bird, not suitable for hunting. There was a fox, but it slid out of sight behind some herdsmen before the centaur could take proper aim, Then a great bear showed up. It was trying to catch a lion cub, but the adult lion was nearby, almost as large as the bear and in an ornery mood. The two big predators circled each other, while the pointing arrowhead of the centaur traced their movements; which one should be taken first?
"Take the lion, stupid," Chester muttered. "Then the bear will take the cub, and leave you alone."
Bink was fascinated, both by this animation of the constellations, and by the strength and grace of the weird beasts. The centaur was a regular creature, of course--but only in mythology relating to Mundania did animals like bears and lions and swans exist. Parts of them showed up in the form of sphinxes, chimerae, griffins, and such, but that didn't really count. A Mundane lion could also be reckoned as the body of a griffin with the head of an ant lion, a composite deriving from the Xanth originals. Now with the shield down, animals could cross the boundary freely, and probably at the fringe all types mixed. Bink regretted, in retrospect, that he had not had the chance to see such creatures as bears in the flesh, when he had visited Mundania. But he had been glad enough to return to Xanth, then!
Almost under the centaur's tail, another strange Mundane creature appeared: a wolf. It resembled a one-headed dog. Bink had seen werewolves in the flesh, but that might not count. What a horror it must be in Mundania, where wolves were locked permanently in their animal form, unable to revert to men!
The sky-centaur whirled on the wolf, aiming his bow. But the wolf was already moving on, because a huge scorpion was following him. The scorpion was being chased by a man--no, it only thought the man was after it. The man, a hugely muscled brute, was actually pursuing a serpent, trying to smash in its head with a club. Yet a dragon was hot after the man, and a really strange long-necked animal followed the dragon. In fact the whole sky was alive with oddities, making it seem like a much more interesting place than the Land of Xanth.
"What is that thing with the neck?" Bink asked.
"Mythological zoology is not my specialty," Chester said. "But I believe it is a Mundane monster called a gaffe." He paused. "No, that's not quite it. A grraff. No, A--a giraffe! That's it The long neck is to keep it clear of hostile ground magic, or something. Its strangest feature, as I understand it, is that despite that long neck it has no voice."
"Strange magic indeed!" Bink agreed. "Strange unmagic, technically. The Land of Mundania could use a good, sensible shot of magic."
The sky was now densely crowded with animals, as the remaining stars emerged. Farther along was a crab, and a wingless bull, and a genuine single-headed dog. Birds abounded--half-familiar ones like the phoenix and bird of paradise, and a host of strange ones, like the crane, toucan, eagle, peacock, dove, and crow. There were people too--men, children, and several fetching young women.
That reminded Bink again of Chameleon. The longer he was away from her, the more he missed her. So what if she had her ugly phase? She also had her lovely phase--
"Look--there is the River Eridanus," Chester cried. Bink found it. The river flowed half across the sky, meandering from the feet of a giant all the way to--Bink couldn't see where it finished. Where could a river in the sky go? All manner of fish were associated with it, and one--"What is that?" Bink cried.
"The fabulous Mundane whale," Chester said. "I'm glad no such monster as that exists in our land!"
Bink agreed emphatically. He traced the river again, seeking its termination. It spread and thinned, becoming vague, eluding him. Then he spied a small lizard. "A chameleon!" he exclaimed.
As he spoke its name, the lizard changed, becoming the human Chameleon he knew and loved: his wife. She looked out at him from the deepest depths of the sky, and her mouth opened. Bink, Bink, she seemed to say. Come to me...
Bink was on his feet, nearly banging his head against a bone. "I'm coming!" he cried joyfully. Why had he ever left her?
But there was no way to reach her. He could not climb the air, or fly up there, and in any event he knew she was just a picture, not real. Just a transformed lizard, itself imaginary. Still, he wished--Now the constellation centaur shot his arrow. The missile blazed as it flew, forming a brilliant streak across the sky, growing brighter and yet brighter as it drew near. Suddenly it loomed frighteningly large and close, as if flying right out of the sky--and cracked into a nearby tree. It was a dogwood; it yelped with pain, then growled and bared its teethlike inner branches in canine fury, seeking its enemy. In a moment it had torn the arrow to shreds.
Bink looked across at Chester, but could not make out the centaur's expression in the dark. That constellation arrow, no more than a shooting star, had struck a real tree close by "Was that centaur shooting at us?"
"He wasn't, he was criminally careless," Chester replied grimly. "If he was, he made a damn poor shot. That's a bad example that reflects on the merits of all centaurs. I will forward him a reminder," Now, visible against the sparkling night sky in silhouette, Chester stood tall and magnificent, a fine stallion of a man, and nocked one of his own arrows. He drew on the bow with all his formidable power and loosed the shaft upward.
Up, up it flew, somehow visible despite the night. Up, impossibly high, right to the verge of the nocturnal dome, right toward the centaur constellation.
Bink knew no physical arrow could strike a star or pattern of stars. After all, the constellations were merely imaginary lines drawn between those stars. Yet--
Chester's arrow plunked into the flank of the constellation centaur. The creature leaped with pain. From hi
s mouth issued two comets and a shooting star: a powerful exclamation!
"Yeah? Same to you, vacuumhead!" Chester retorted.
The constellation reached back and yanked at Chester's arrow. A nova exploded from his mouth as he contemplated the damage. Several dim stars pulsed there, suggestive of the wound. He grabbed a handful of soft down feathers from the swan and rubbed them against the injury. Now it was the defeathered swan who cussed a bright streak of shooting stars, but the bird did not dare attack the centaur.
The sky-centaur snatched the extensible tube called the telescope and put it to his eye. The magic of this tube enabled him to see much farther than otherwise. "^
[email protected]!!" he exclaimed with really foul invective, looking for the originator of the objectionable arrow.
"Right here, hoofhead!" Chester bawled, and lofted another arrow into the sky. "Come down and fight like a centaur!"
"I wouldn't--" Bink cautioned.
The constellation seemed to hear the challenge. He swung his telescope around and oriented on the bone-camp. A vile ringed planet shot from his mouth.
"That's right, dope!" Chester cried. "Come prove you're worthy of the name!"
Worthy of the name "dope"? Bink didn't like this at all, but was unable to stop it.
The constellation nocked another arrow. So did Chester. For a time the two faced each other, bows drawn, as it were, daring each other to shoot first. Then, almost together, their arrows leaped forth.
Both shots were uncomfortably accurate. Bink saw the two arrows cross midway in the heavens and home in on their targets as if magically guided. Neither centaur moved: this was evidently a point of honor in such duels. The one who jumped clear would show weakness of nerve, and few centaurs were weak in that department.
Both arrows missed--but not by much. Chester's shot almost grazed the constellation's forehead while the sky-centaur's arrow thunked into the ground beside Chester's left forehoof, which happened to be quite close to the Good Magician's head.